


Scar Tissue

by Squash (JeSuisGourde)



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Mentions of Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 20:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16562282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeSuisGourde/pseuds/Squash
Summary: Mickey's mouth feels sour. He can feed the baby, he can change the baby. He can't look at the baby. Ian looks at the baby like it isn't made of pain. Mickey wants to claw his own skin off.The three of them have a conversation that nobody wants to have. It happens anyway. Just like the first time happened anyway.





	Scar Tissue

**Author's Note:**

> This went in a completely different direction than I intended but I absolutely love how it turned out.

It happens in between, when Ian is finally up again, but not bouncing off the walls, and he's making spaghetti while Mickey goes over the books for the rub 'n tug. Like somehow they can play at normal. But it happens. Because it was going to happen. They don't expect it, don't want to talk or think about it, don't want to face it. A weird, bile-raising nightmare that blankets the three of them. They try to keep it distant like a bloody scene in a movie they all watched once. It happens anyway. Just like before.

So Mickey's watching Ian at the stove and thinking vaguely of the heat and the way Ian's muscles move under his shirt. So he's only half-focused on the numbers in front of him. Something flips over under his ribs and he looks down again. In his head, he's still watching Ian. Looking like he used to not let himself look. Like he can look now, and sometimes even does.

Svetlana storms into the house, baby on hip, hair frizzed up around her face, her shirt stained damp. She dumps the child onto Mickey's lap. Maybe it was a bad idea, he thinks. This, he means.

“You take him,” she commands. “He vomit all over me. I clean him. Now I must shower.”

Mickey holds the child away from him like a dirty towel. Looks at his lap, can't look at the baby. He can change the baby, he can feed the baby. He can't look at the baby.

Ian sees it, rescues him. “Come on,” he says, too gentle, “Switch with me. You stir, I'll hold Yevgeny.”

Mickey can't help flinching at the name, too. It's like when someone wakes him up and he's not ready, a start, one hand flying out to attack. He stirs the spaghetti sauce in its pan. It looks like congealed blood. He tries to block out the sound of Ian cooing at the baby, the sound of its little gurgles, the sound of it being too loud, too _there_. It was all a bad idea. He stops stirring to get himself another beer. He'd been in a good mood, watching Ian move around the tiny kitchen smiling to himself. All that is tanking now. He hates this. Sure, he always knew he was fucked for life, but not like _this_. Not like in the way that makes him almost understand the thumb he grew up under. He stirs the spaghetti sauce. He looks at Ian, not the baby. Looks out the window.

Svetlana comes out of the bathroom in a threadbare robe that Mickey recognizes as Mandy's. Her hair is making a damp track down her back. She stops short of the table, looking at Ian in the seat, Mickey at the stove, baby in Ian's lap, not Mickey's.

“Why are you not holding baby?” she asks, turning those eyes on him that he can only think of as cold, even if maybe it's like dry ice, so cold it burns. “You need to hold baby more. You promised you would take care of him now.”

Mickey looks at her, looks away. Twists his lips. “I said I'd help."

“You do not like holding baby?”

“No.”

The sauce has started bubbling. He turns the heat down. He hears Ian coo at the baby, offering to help, hears Svetlana move forward. He doesn't look at them. His mouth feels sour, like he's swallowed rotten tomatoes. Mouth sour, gut sour, head throbbing, disgust rising in him for a reason he can't think of. Can't let himself think of. A bad idea.

Svetlana is staring at him, baby in her arms again, Ian with his fingers at the tiny cheek. “You must hold him, sometime. Baby needs father.”

“Baby doesn't _need_ anything from me,” Mickey mutters to the spaghetti, fists curling. It would be a good idea to turn and walk away right now. He doesn't do it. Sometimes he just wants to destroy everything. Sometimes he thinks that he should have gotten rid of one specific gun ages ago, thrown it in the river, scrapped the pieces in dumpsters across the south side. He can feel it sitting quietly in the cabinet, laughing. Making his temple throb again. He wants to punch a wall.

“Baby needs father,” she repeats. “You do not like it. Too bad. When we met—”

“We didn't 'meet'. Nothing about that was a fucking meeting.” Bile rising in his throat. The itch like he wants to take his own skin off. He can't look at the baby. “I don't want it. I never fucking wanted it. Leave me out.”

“Baby has no choice.”

“Neither did I!”

His jaw snaps shut. Rotten tomato at the bottom of his gut has split open, bleeding. Everything is sour. Ian is staring at him, a twist in his face, like that day, like after that day when he stared and didn't know what to say. Nothing like back then because now there's sympathy, now there's sadness instead of anger. Mickey is still angry. His head throbs. Svetlana drops her eyes to the child, looks back at him.

“You rolled over. You came to me.”

The truth falls out of his mouth like lead bullets dropping off his tongue. Metallic. Heavy. Sour. “He would have killed us. He would have killed Ian and made me watch.”

He can't let himself see the way Ian curls away against the back of the chair. He can't let himself see the way a single trail of blood had stained right down the middle of Ian's chest. Like he was being marked for slaughter. He can't let himself see what would have happened if there had been no phone call. He can't let himself see what actually happened. His throat hurts. A gag trapped halfway up his chest.

“I am sorry. I did what I was paid to do.” Her hunched shoulders, thickly lined eyes. Dead fish-eye look of confusion. You weren't expecting this, were you? Two bloody boys in a fucked up living room, staring at each other past your naked body. The blood, the bruises. The bruised look in his eyes.

“Yeah, well, that's not what we fucking call it here.” It's a word he can't say, has never said.

Ian is staring at him, mouth half open. Maybe he wants to say something. Maybe his mouth tastes sour too. Mickey spits in the sink.

“Your father, he paid me to do it. It was just my job. Yes or no did not matter to me.”

They're going to make him say it. He's going to say it and then he's going to vomit on the floor. The sour is in his nose, behind his eyes. They're going to make him say it. His voice comes out louder than he means to. “There's a word for that. It's called fucking _rape_.”

He doesn't vomit on the floor. He chugs the rest of his beer and grabs a third, dropping the empty can in the sink next to his gob of spit. Ian flinches in the corner of his eye. Like the word was meant for him. Svetlana looks down at the child in her lap. Mickey wants to hurt something. That's nothing new. He wants to claw his own skin off, gouge his own eyes out, set everything on fire. Wants to throw up everything inside him but he can't even retch into the sink.

“I am sorry,” she says. Like it means something. You can't just say that. You don't get to just say that. _He_ never said it. Just laughed. Just spit. She's staring now at the couch that he also can't look at. “I did not know. I was scared. He was Terry Milkovich. He had a gun.”

Ian's looking now, too. Mickey can't look. He pinches at his eyes, at the sour. Leans against the counter until it digs into his hip, until he's sure there will be a dent there against the side of his leg. There was a gun, and two naked boys covered in blood. There was a gun, and more where that came from. He did nothing because anything he could have done might have gotten Ian killed. Part of him always thought he'd die at the hands of his own father. Skull split open like a rotten tomato, maybe stabbed like a ripe one, maybe he'll get beaten to a paste. There would be a lot of red, he knew that for sure. He never factored Ian into any of it. Didn't think about it. Couldn't risk it. It wasn't his fault, not really. Mickey knows this. You take your beat down, you stand back and let others take theirs. _Get the fuck off him_ wasn't just a sentence, it was a declaration.

He would have said _Get the fuck off me_ if he could have. If he didn't know it was a bad idea. If he didn't know he was supposed to take his beat down in silence. If he didn't know that he would have held her there. She was just there. Just on him. Just fucking him. It wasn't her. It was Terry. Milkoviches do the raping. Shit.

He feels sick. He wants to claw his own skin off. They're still staring at the couch. He still can't look, can't think, can't breathe. He closes his eyes and hopes he doesn't vomit when he opens his mouth this time. “I know.”

She pulls her wet hair off the back of her neck and looks at him. The cold gaze has tempered. She only looks tired, not sour. “I am sorry for you. But it was not my fault.”

“I know.” He wants to spit into the sink again, but swallows instead. Shoves his fists against the counter, maybe pressing them into something will stop him punching a wall. Still doesn't look at the baby. “Still, you didn't have to keep it. You didn't have to stay here.”

“I had nowhere else. You know this.”

“You could have found someone else.” He's not sure why he's so stuck on this. Trapped on this what-if that won't change, she's here and she's not leaving, not now. But he's stuck on this nail until someone cuts him loose. Angry. Cheated. “I'm sure there were plenty of other legal Ivans out there looking for wives. Some fuckin' sugar daddy that gets off on having a whore to give money to. I don't fucking know.”

The _it's not fair_ that hangs between them. The _this shouldn't have happened_. Every time his skin feels like it doesn't belong on him, like it's so full of filth and blood he wants to pull it right off. The rotten, sour tomato dripping hurt all over everything he's ever touched. The way Ian's hands are up against his mouth like he's back there on that couch watching it all over again. The way he can still feel her skin on his thighs, the blood in his face, the crawling in his gut. Mickey hates it all.

And she's here, looking up at him with cold eyes thawed to pools of raw disappointment, sighing. “The truth— I hoped when baby came you would fall in love with it, and maybe with me. But you did not even want to know his name. And when you said what you did in the bar, I knew it would not be true.”

“No shit.”

Something is burning. He wants to set the whole house on fire. Mickey turns the stove off, mutters _shit_ , throws the spoon into the sink where it splatters red droplets across the wall. He runs his hands through his hair and leans against the counter. It still smells like smoke. Ian and Svetlana are still looking at him. He pinches the bridge of his nose, like it will stop his head from aching. Like his tongue will stop tasting sour. Like the burning smell isn't coupling with the sour to make his stomach twist uncomfortably.

“It is not your fault. It is not mine. This we know. But you could at least hold baby.”

“I can't even fucking look at the thing,” he snaps.

She puts the baby in Ian's arms. “Try.”

Mickey sees the way Ian smiles at the baby, brushes its cheek, soft humming sounds. How he can just look at the kid like there isn't a rotten tomato in the pit of his stomach, like things aren't burrowing into his skin. Like the baby isn't the numb buzzing in his brain, the sick feeling of her skin on his legs. Like there's something there that isn't just memories of pain. Ian looks at him, hope in his eyes like a bell, please Mick, this time, please.

He thumbs his lip, sighs through the tangle in his throat, pretends his knees aren't shaking. Ian gets up. Ian walks around the table holding the baby. Ian stands next to him with the baby.

“It's okay, Mick.” It's not okay. “Look at him, he's so little.” He's so little and Mickey can't look at him. What about when he's big and he looks like him and then the pain is there to talk to him and laugh and meet his eyes what happens when his pain is a _person_?

Ian doesn't make him hold the baby. Ian stands there with the baby, smiling down at it. Smiling up at Mickey. The rotten tomato rises up, riding its friend the smell of burning. Threatens to choke. He shoves them down, down, looks at Ian. His skin is crawling. His eyes are burning. The side of Ian's arm touches his. Ian isn't burning. He's humming, he's holding a baby and his skin is a glass of water and his eyes are a bell of hope that Mickey can't hear. Like that kid's book about the Christmas bell. Ian's eyes meet his and Mickey inhales quickly, inhales to get the fever away. His knees want to shake themselves out of his skin. His skin has bugs burrowing into it. He clenches his fists until he can feel little moons cut into his palms.

“It's okay. He's just a baby, Mick. He can't hurt you.” Not now, maybe. Not yet. Just wait. Just give it time. Just give Mickey time. Someone's getting hurt, that's not going to change. Someone's going to have a rotten tomato hidden in their palm until they find the target they've been looking for. The apple metaphor is too nice for this.

Ian holds the baby in one arm, slides his fingers in the spaces between U-UP, he's trying to complete a dead circuit. A circuit that never even existed. Mickey squeezes like he's trying to burst a tomato in his hand. “Mick.”

He's glad Ian doesn't say the baby's name. That would be too much. A bad idea. Svetlana's eyes are burning up his cheek. There are splatters of spaghetti sauce on the floor in front of the sink.

“Mick.” Gentle. Gentle like he wasn't when it happened. Like Mickey wouldn't let him be. The slide of a thumb across his hand, Ian's arm against his. Cool skin. Ian's hand in his hand, not her skin on his thighs. Ian humming, for him and the baby.

Mickey breathes in through the knot, lungs jerking. Closes his eyes. Opens them. Ian squeezes his fingers. The sound of skin on skin. The sound of Ian humming. The blood in his eyes. The spaghetti sauce on the kitchen floor, not red like that. Gun to his head. Gun in the cabinet. Svetlana on him, around him, six feet away and sitting at the table. Terry far away. Ian here, between his fingers. The baby here, in Ian's arms.

He looks. At the tiny, squashed, alien face. The light brown feathering of hair. The blue eyes looking up at him. The small thing made of him and her. Made of pain. Made of the way he laid there like a sack of meat. Moved like he knew he had a lie to prove. Fists. A fist. A tiny fist.

He looks away. Clears his throat. Tries to swallow the sour. Doesn't quite succeed. Ian squeezes his hand and looks at Svetlana. A small nod, and she's circling the table, slow like he's a frightened animal, and maybe he is, and she takes the baby from Ian's arms and sits back down. Ian takes his other hand, doesn't wince at the crush of Mickey's fingers. He kisses Mickey's temple, where the blood was. Kisses Mickey's lips.

“You did good, Mick.”

It doesn't smell like burning anymore.

 


End file.
